Dorothy and Dwight Darnell, were surprised last week when they discovered reams of pages printed from the Internet in their son Cody's bedroom and learned of his plan to print a hard copy of all of the Internet to win a $50 bet with his seventeen year old cousin, Mikey Darnell-Wilson. The bet came about during the main course of the family's Thanksgiving lunch after a heated debate between Cody and Mikey about the size of the Internet and the feasibility of printing it out. Under the terms of the bet, Cody has six months to complete the printing and if Mikey can find a site on the Internet which has not been printed he wins the bet, if he can’t he loses.

After hearing about the bet, Dwight phoned Mikey who immediately apologised to his aunt and uncle for unfairly teasing his younger cousin and offered to call off the bet. Cody, however, insisted that he be allowed to continue and Dorothy and Dwight reluctantly agreed under the condition that websites which contain adult or obscene content be excluded from the bet. Dwight explained, "I know there’s some nasty filth on the Internet that a good Christian family like the Darnells don’t want to see so we got us some clever software that stops it getting into our humble home."

News of the bet became public when Mikey's regular posts of progress reports and photos on his personal homepage were featured by one of Springwood’s local radio stations. Since then, the town's residents have flooded the Darnells with offers of assistance. The local computer supplies store, Big Frank’s World of Computers, has donated a large capacity laser printer and the Springwood Traders' Association is seeking donations from local businesses to cover the costs of paper and printer toner. Others are helping by taking it in turns to do the printing, creating lists of websites to be printed and providing storage space for the printouts.

Environmental organisations were outraged when they heard of the bet and the president of the Springwood Conservation Society, Art Grossmann, was forthright in expressing his opinion, saying "You have got to be joking. Some dumb kid is wasting all that paper to win a stupid $50 bet." In the light of this criticism, Cody has agreed to use recycled paper and to use a printer driver that can print eight pages on a sheet of paper.

This heart warming story of determination and community spirit has been featured on national and international news services and the Darnells have become local celebrities. Dorothy, a waitress at a local diner and Dwight, an unemployed truck driver, have been surprised by the amount of interest in Cody’s story. As Dorothy explained, "We've been getting hundreds of calls from all sorts of people. Most of them want interviews and we've even had Hollywood people wanting to make a feature film. Imagine that, a film about our Cody and little ol’ Springwood."

The bet will be decided on May 24th, 2006 and will be celebrated a special holiday proclaimed by the mayor of Springwood, Ed Newsome, as Internet Day. Cody summed up the sentiment of the town by saying, "This is like, totally, the coolest thing ever. I'm gonna show Mikey that he’s wrong." before returning to his computer and printer.

This is the most hopeless bet I've ever seen, and the poor parents and entire town are actually egging him on! Amazing.

"This heart warming story of determination and community spirit ..." Springwood must one serious shithole if this is what inspires hope in the community. Big Frank's World of Computers? Internet Day? Please tell me cool.com.au is Australia's version of The Onion.

"This heart warming story of determination and community spirit ..." Springwood must one serious shithole if this is what inspires hope in the community. Big Frank's World of Computers? Internet Day? Please tell me cool.com.au is Australia's version of The Onion.

das

After seeing the stories: 'Exclusive: Crazy Frog Interview' and 'Nerdcore Gangsta Hip Hop: geeks get rhymin.' It must be a serious paper.

Since then, the town's residents have flooded the Darnells with offers of assistance. The local computer supplies store, Big Frank’s World of Computers, has donated a large capacity laser printer and the Springwood Traders' Association is seeking donations from local businesses to cover the costs of paper and printer toner. Others are helping by taking it in turns to do the printing, creating lists of websites to be printed and providing storage space for the printouts.

Well, considering that I can't find Cody Darnell... or Springwood, ND... or Mayor Ed Newsome... or the Springwood Conservation Society... I'll go out on a limb here and say this probably didn't happen...

__________________Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me; other times I can barely see.

Well, considering that I can't find Cody Darnell... or Springwood, ND... or Mayor Ed Newsome... or the Springwood Conservation Society... I'll go out on a limb here and say this probably didn't happen...

Don't ruin this inspirational story for us!!

__________________Winner of the DVDTalk 2010 College Basketball Bracket Pool

My vote is for "Cool.au" is Australia's version of the Onion, especially after reading this article:

Quote:

Discarded Design E-mail
Written by Space Cadet

Monday, 27 February 2006

The gloves are off in the battle between evolutionary theory and creationism to answer the age-old question, "how did we get here?" but now another school of thought has emerged.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published a book, The Origin of Species, in which he described his radical theory that all life on earth is descended from a common ancestor and that natural selection is the process driving evolution. While Darwin's theory has become accepted by the scientific community, it has met with resistance from those whose religious beliefs contend that the universe and everything in it was created by a deity.

In an attempt to legitimise their beliefs, some creationists have proposed a concept called intelligent design as an alternative to evolutionary theory. Intelligent design contends that there are systems in nature that are so complex (such as the eye, feathered wings and biochemical systems at the cellular level) that they could not have arisen by natural selection and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent entity. Intelligent design, however, does not qualify as a scientific theory because it cannot be tested experimentally and does not generate hypotheses or predictions.

The design of complex natural systems has also been used as an argument against intelligent design and therefore as an argument against creationism. An intelligent designer would be expected to create complex natural systems using the best possible design, and it has been argued that the existence of flawed designs such as the human appendix, green plants and junk DNA supports evolutionary theory and not intelligent design.

Recently, a new idea has emerged which has made the scientific community re-think its arguments against intelligent design. A multi-disciplinary research group from Harvard University in the USA have published a discussion paper on discarded design in the February edition of the science journal Evolve. According to this new idea, something as complex as life on a planet such as earth could not have been created exactly right on the first attempt and would need a few practice tries. The co-existence of well designed and poorly designed complex natural systems here on earth points to it being a practice run which was discarded and sent to the far reaches of the universe while a better version was created.

Interestingly, the discarded design concept suggests that there is not just one creator but a committee of creators with an unknown number of members contributing to design features. As anyone who has worked on a large project as part of a team will know, this explains the large variation in designs here on earth and the need for trial runs before the right version is agreed upon. Unlike intelligent design, discarded design may be able to be recognised as a scientific theory. As with any new idea, discarded design has been met with scepticism by the scientific community but if we ever find life on other planets with similar natural systems that have improved or worse designs compared to life here on earth then that will be seen as supporting evidence.

(oh yeah, now after looking at the site- it's clearly a parody website)

How ridiculous. All the cousin has to do is register a new site with a ridiculous name, and set it up with register.com to go live about 10 minutes before the bet is settled. I'm shocked nobody's thought of this.

I can't wait to see the tally of what this will cost- $33,000 in supplies to win a $50 bet. Oh yeah, that's worth it.

If I discovered my kid had even wasted HALF a ream of paper trying to print the internet, He would be banned from using the computer so fast his head would spin...

Well, considering that I can't find Cody Darnell... or Springwood, ND... or Mayor Ed Newsome... or the Springwood Conservation Society... I'll go out on a limb here and say this probably didn't happen...

Quote:

The local computer supplies store, Big Frank’s World of Computers, has donated a large capacity laser printer

And I can't find Big Frank’s World of Computers! I'd definately go there for all my computing needs. Bummer

__________________"You couldn't molest the audience more than to promise Legends of the Fall and Driving Miss Daisy then to unleash this on them. They'd just been gang-raped."
- Director David Fincher on the test screenings of Seven.